T3 Motion’s three-wheeled R3 is real, has in-dash Galaxy Tab (video)

Since 2009, T3 Motion has been waving computer-created images of three-wheeled electric vehicles in our face and taunting us with the idea of a dashboard built around an iPad. Now, it seems the company is finally ready to deliver a real product, and you can pre-order yours now for a $500 deposit. Besides existing in the really real world, the big difference between the R3 and previous concepts is that the in-dash iPad has been replaced with a Galaxy Tab. When it finally hits the market, T3 Motion claims this three-wheeled EV will have a range of between 80 and 100 miles, a top speed of 70MPH, and that it will be classified as a motorcycle. Unfortunately, it will also have a rather hefty price tag of at least $25,000 — an awful lot to pay for the luxury of riding in the carpool lane, even if your ride looks like a cross between a Nissan GT-R, a Mini, and Batman’s tank-like Tumbler. PR and video after the break.

Continue reading T3 Motion’s three-wheeled R3 is real, has in-dash Galaxy Tab (video)

T3 Motion’s three-wheeled R3 is real, has in-dash Galaxy Tab (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Students create affordable eye-tracking tablet for the disabled

Eye-Tracking Tablet

Disabled users have long been able to control computers with just the flick of an eye, but those hardware and software packages are prohibitively expensive. Heck, the surprisingly accurate Tobii PCEye is a veritable steal at $6,900. And, while we can’t vouch for its usability, engineering students at Brigham Young University have managed an impressive feat, by whipping up an eye-tracking Windows 7 tablet that costs under $1,500. The system was created as part of a partnership with EyeTech Digital Systems, which plans to market the devices in parts of the world where other eye-tracking solutions are unaffordable — like just about anywhere the roads aren’t paved with gold. We could even see a few able-bodied (but incredibly lazy) bloggers getting some use out of this — mornings around here would be a lot easier if we could double-fist piping hot coffee mugs while typing with our eyeballs.

Continue reading Students create affordable eye-tracking tablet for the disabled

Students create affordable eye-tracking tablet for the disabled originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Editorial: Dear RIM, I’m your customer and I don’t wear a suit

Like Joanna shamelessly admitted in her editorial a few months back, I was a BlackBerry addict. I’m also a 20-year old college student / tech-head whose phone serves every purpose from communications device to music player to TV remote. I tried to switch cold turkey and bought an iPhone 4 in August, but somewhere around Thanksgiving I gave in and picked up a Verizon Bold. I’ve been double fisting ever since — using the BB almost exclusively for BBM, and my iPhone for everything else.

Fast forward to late last week when I attended a meeting in New York with Tim Stevens and RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis to get the latest dish on the PlayBook. As Lazaridis demoed myriad features from HDMI presentation mode to the built-in music player on the company’s hotly debated tablet, it hit me: the one question I’ve been pondering since getting a real look at the device. Who is it for? At that moment, I realized the problem that’s been plaguing RIM as of late — and not just in its tablet strategy, but its phone strategy as a whole: it doesn’t know who its products are for and subsequently can’t deliver. Am I crazy? Read on after the break and hear me out.

Continue reading Editorial: Dear RIM, I’m your customer and I don’t wear a suit

Editorial: Dear RIM, I’m your customer and I don’t wear a suit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry PlayBook review

The words “play” and “book” are a bit of an odd choice for RIM’s latest attempt at consumer relevance, a tablet that, at its core, runs one of the most hardcore and industry-friendly operating systems known to man. The OS is QNX and the hardware is, of course, the BlackBerry PlayBook. It’s an enterprise-friendly offering that’s also out to conquer the consumer tablet ecosphere, hoping to follow in the footsteps of the BlackBerry handsets that have filled the pockets of corporate executives and BBM addicts around the globe.

It’s something of a serious tablet when compared to the competition running software from Apple and Google and, while it certainly has games, its biggest strengths are rather more boring. It does a really great job at displaying PowerPoint presentations, for example, and has the security chops to keep last quarter’s dismal sales figures from falling into the wrong hands. Exciting stuff? No, but useful features for sure, and regardless of whether you find those intriguing or boring this is RIM’s seven-inch, Flash-having but 3G-lacking tablet clad in an unassuming but extremely sophisticated exterior. It’s what’s running behind the glass that disappoints.

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook review

BlackBerry PlayBook review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bridgestone builds world’s largest e-paper tablets, shuns consumers (video)

Bridgestone AeroBee Tablets

If you thought the Kno was unwieldy, check out these A4 and A3 paper-sized AeroBee terminals from Bridgestone. The company, best known for its tire commercials featuring adorable animals about to get run over, unveiled two new tablets with 21-inch and 13-inch (underwhelming) color e-paper screens — the largest available on the market. You can check them out in the video after the break, but don’t get too excited, these beasts aren’t destined for consumers. Instead, they’re being marketed to businesses which will likely use them as in-store displays or kiosks. Next step: coffee table-book e-readers. Though, we suspect In the Shadow of No Towers would lose something in the translation.

Continue reading Bridgestone builds world’s largest e-paper tablets, shuns consumers (video)

Bridgestone builds world’s largest e-paper tablets, shuns consumers (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS apologizes for Eee Pad Transformer delay it won’t detail, US launch pegged for end of April

Well, as far as delays go, this is looking like one that ASUS is willing to accept. As the company explains on its Facebook page, demand for the Eee Pad Transformer has apparently been so high that the first few batches have sold out “much quicker’ than it had planned. That’s left the global launch for the Honeycomb tablet a bit up in the air, with the company only directing folks to its Facebook pages for individual countries for more information, although they unfortunately aren’t providing much in the way of details at the moment.

That delay apparently won’t affect the US launch, though — at least not to any significant degree. According to the upstart website JoannaStern.com, the Transformer will be hitting the US by the end of this month with a price tag of $399, while the keyboard dock will run you $149. Could we possibly be seeing the beginnings of a tablet price war? Here’s hoping.

[Thanks, James A]

ASUS apologizes for Eee Pad Transformer delay it won’t detail, US launch pegged for end of April originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola to begin beta testing rugged Android tablet, steps up enterprise efforts

We’ve been keeping our eyes on Motorola’s plans to sink its claws into the enterprise market for at least the past couple of months, and it looks like the company is ramping up its efforts with a rugged Android tablet fit for the workplace. A presentation provided to us by a helpful tipster outlines Moto’s plans to be the “first physical embodiment defining Android for the Enterprise,” with a Gingerbread-equipped tablet entering beta testing this October. As you can see from the slide above, the slate will sport both a 1.3MP front-facing camera and an 8MP rear-facing camera “with illumination and aiming” for barcode scanning. It’s also carrying a dual-core 1GHz OMAP 4 CPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB NAND, a 7-inch LCD display, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, and USB connectivity. It should also pack enough juice to supply five and a half hours of streaming video, and should be able to withstand a four foot drop, extreme temperatures, excessive dust, and splashing water. From the look of things, this tablet’s going to be more at home in the workshop than the boardroom, but we’ll just have to wait and see what becomes of it once the thing makes it out of beta.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Motorola to begin beta testing rugged Android tablet, steps up enterprise efforts originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo hoping to launch 23-inch tablet this year (update: debunked)

Lenovo hoping to launch 23-inch tablet this year, your lap may never be the same

Dual 14-inch touchscreens not big enough? 21-inches of touch sensitivity still failing to sate your fingers’ need to roam wild and free? Maybe the 23-inch behemoth of a tablet that Lenovo is planning on unleashing this year will make those digits dance with delight. The plan is, apparently, to take one of the company’s Windows-powered all-in-one machines, delete the stand, put it on a crash diet, slap a big ‘ol battery on there, and then watch the eyes of pixel junkies around the world light up with glee. William Cai from Lenovo said “It’s obviously not for full mobility use, but it could be moved from room to room in the house… you could lay it on a table top and use it for family games.” Never mind that — with the addition of just a few legs this 23-inch slab could be a table.

Update: Lenovo just pinged us back when reaching out for a comment, and unfortunately for those with big (big!) aspirations, it seems that something was taken out of context. “We have no plans to introduce a 23-inch tablet,” says the PC maker. Bummer.

Lenovo hoping to launch 23-inch tablet this year (update: debunked) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 08:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Beta 1 for webOS 3.0 leaks, lets you touch the TouchPad a little early (video)

Beta 1 for webOS 3.0 leaks, lets you touch the TouchPad a little early (video)

You don’t have to be a coder to appreciate the wonders that a software development kit can contain, especially when there’s a nice emulator tucked in there to give an early taste of things to come. That’s exactly what can be found within the webOS 3.0 SDK, and that SDK is exactly what’s been leaked to the world, giving anyone who wants it the ability to play with the OS that’ll make the HP TouchPad tick. PreCentral.net took the emulator within for a heck of a test drive, providing a lengthy textual overview of everything from keyboards to calendars, along with the video that’s embedded below. Sure, clicking and dragging in an early emulator isn’t nearly as much fun as tapping and swiping on some beautiful hardware, but it sure does cut down on the smudgy fingerprints. It’s cheaper, too.

Continue reading Beta 1 for webOS 3.0 leaks, lets you touch the TouchPad a little early (video)

Beta 1 for webOS 3.0 leaks, lets you touch the TouchPad a little early (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Xoom sees MicroSD card support enabled in latest version of Tiamat kernel

Aside from shipping without Adobe Flash Player preloaded, the Motorola Xoom also has the ignoble distinction of having a non-functioning MicroSD card slot. We’re assured by the company’s reps that the update to make storage expansion work is imminent, but if you have to have it right this very minute, there’s now a kernel for you. It goes by the name of Tiamat, originating on xda-developers (as most good things do), and has recently stepped up to support MicroSD card storage. You’ll find download links and instructions for Tiamat at the source link, plus a few happy reports of it working as advertised.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Xoom sees MicroSD card support enabled in latest version of Tiamat kernel originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 06:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Android Central  |  sourcexda-developers  | Email this | Comments